


Margin for Error

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Awkward Romance, Developing Relationship, F/M, Getting Together, Humor, Not Epilogue Compliant, Pining, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16494956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: Ron has spent the better part of a decade avoiding Daphne Greengrass.It’s absolutely personal.





	Margin for Error

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. this is a (only slightly late!) birthday gift for tumblr user and all around perfect human being @drcmalfoys, who deserves the world but gets this fic instead!!!! she's a star
> 
> 2\. sidekick syndrome is real
> 
> 3\. i'm taking a baby step out of semi-retirement to announce that i'm focusing almost entirely on original fiction now! i finished a novel earlier this year, and while i query that, i'm writing some other stuff - so far, there's [a novella about necromancer brothers](https://gum.co/QAkwK) & [a collection of short stories about Youth and Growing Up](https://gum.co/WwiFL); you can follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/aa_nderson), [tumblr](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com), or [sign up for my newsletter](https://gumroad.com/aanderson) if you're at all interested!
> 
> 4\. ron x daphne is a brutally underrated rare pair please fall in love with them so bernice and i aren't alone in this extremely wholesome corner of hell thank you & goodnight
> 
> xoxo

* * *

 

Ron has spent the better part of a decade avoiding Daphne Greengrass.

It’s absolutely personal.

Daphne Greengrass is vapid and shallow and spineless and irritating and has these _eyes_ , these big, pretty, _solemn_ brown eyes, that—quite fucking frankly, full fucking offense—don’t match the rest of her at all.

Ron remembers how she used to quietly giggle into her palm whenever Malfoy made a joke that was meaner than it was clever, and how she used to follow Pansy Parkinson around like some kind of outrageously well-trained pet, and how diligently, infuriatingly _efficient_ she used to be about ignoring anyone she didn’t either share a last name or a common room with. She’d been so _boring_ , soft-spoken and mealy-mouthed, like she’d cultivated the entirety of her demurely dishwater-bland personality in a single afternoon of Pureblood brainwashing and hadn’t ever thought to question it—because she was a relic, a trophy, a lukewarm cast-off leftover from a different time, a bygone era of tea parties and arranged marriages and virginity pacts and country estates with single sitting rooms the size of the whole Burrow.

And Ron could never decide, not back then and not in the years that have passed since, if he actually, genuinely _hated_ her or if it was more complicated than that and he just didn’t _respect_ her.

It says something about him, he’s sure, something supremely unflattering, that he still finds even the _idea_ of Daphne Greengrass so repellant, so discomfiting, because she’s meant to be his other half, his _better_ half, the one person out of all the other billions who has the power to fill in his myriad holepunch-ragged blank spaces with permanent ink, not that acid-green ever-changing Quick Quotes shite.

She’s his soulmate.

She’s supposed to _matter_ to him.

She just . . . doesn’t.

She never really has.

 

* * *

 

Ron’s heaving a much too heavy box of experimental _Mister Right Now_ love potions off the shelf behind the counter during the regular mid-morning lull, stubbornly refusing to reach for the wand he’d momentarily forgotten he even owned, sweat beading on his forehead, muscles bunched up and straining against the seams of his ugly purple t-shirt, a pained, decidedly determined grunt gaining traction in his lungs—

Behind him, someone clears their throat.

It’s a delicate, tentative, _feminine_ sound, high-pitched, polite, uncannily familiar, and his scalp prickles as he drops the box with a loud, rattling thud, spinning around, straightening his back, dragging his fingers through his overgrown hair.

“Hey, can I help . . .” Ron trails off, voice breaking like it hasn’t since he was fifteen, and blinks. Once. Twice. “You.”

Daphne Greengrass is standing in front of him.

Daphne Greengrass is standing in front of him with her hands clasped, her hair longer and her face fuller, a lace-paneled skirt swirling primly around her thighs and a loose-fitting silk blouse unbuttoned just enough to show off the wings of her collarbones. Her lips are parted, slick and shimmering, and her cheeks are flushed pink beneath a faint dusting of freckles. She looks expensive. Well-groomed. Forbidden. More like an _idea_ than a real person.

“Hello,” she says, chin dipping a fraction, and there’s something _shy_ about the movement, something decidedly unpracticed, something that has Ron’s gut clenching and his tonsils fusing together. “I—wasn’t expecting to . . . um. I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Yeah. Well. I work here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he says gruffly, plucking at his t-shirt. “That’s why I’m dressed like this.”

She flicks her gaze over his torso, lingering on his arms, his chest. “Of course,” she says, twisting her fingers around the strap of her handbag. Her nails are painted white. “Purple’s not a Gryffindor color, is it?”

Ron scratches at the stubble on his jaw. Is she joking? Do career Pureblood princess socialites even know how to _make_ jokes? “Uh. No. It . . . isn’t,” he says. “But, uh, since it is—my job—what, uh, what can I help you with?”

Daphne pauses, fiddling with the drop-pearl pendant on her necklace. “I need a Pygmy Puff.”

Ron scrunches his nose up. “What? Seriously?”

“It’s for Astoria,” Daphne says quickly. “Not me. It’s—her cat died. And I would just take her to pick out a new one, but our father’s _terribly_ allergic, and since he’s already so miserable stuck at home—” She abruptly cuts herself off, clamping her bottom lip between her teeth, and squeezes her eyes shut like she’s fervently wishing she could get a do-over on the past five minutes.

Ron sympathizes.

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence, the only sounds in the shop the distant bustle of Diagon Alley and the frankly ominous rattling of the stock room door; but then Daphne’s eyes are fluttering open, big and brown and velvet-soft and just as jarring, just as _disarming_ as they were when he was fourteen and fucking furious that the name gradually stenciling itself onto his shoulder wasn’t the one he’d wanted it to be.

“Anyway,” Daphne continues carefully, “another cat is out of the question, but all her friends at school have Pygmy Puffs, so. Um. I thought she might like one.”

Ron squints. “Your sister’s still in school?”

“She’s only fifteen.”

“Slytherin?”

Daphne stiffens. “Why does that matter?”

“It doesn’t,” Ron says. His palms are clammy, and it's fucking annoying. “Obviously. We’re just—talking. Catching up. You brought up Houses first."

Daphne quirks an unimpressed, finely manicured brow. “Ravenclaw.”

“What?”

“Astoria,” Daphne clarifies, a tremor of what Ron suspects might be pride creeping into her voice, “she’s a Ravenclaw.”

Ron tries not to let on how surprised he is by that, but he’s a shit actor and an even worse liar, so he’s probably not particularly successful. “Oh,” he says, coughing into his fist, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “that’s—nice. Excellent. Good.”

Daphne offers him a thin, only partially sincere smile, casting a none-too subtle glance at the clock hanging above the cash register. It’s the kind of casually superior dismissal that Ron’s been on the receiving end of more times than he can count—customer service, much like acting and lying, is not his fucking forte—but it’s inexplicably obnoxious, coming from her. Inexplicably wrong.

It itches.

It _grates_.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Ron is still thinking about it.

About _her_.

He’s been stubbornly refusing to acknowledge her existence for what feels like four or five lifetimes, but he’d never considered the possibility that _she_ might have her own opinions about the situation.

About _him_.

She has his name—well, _presumably_ his name, unless Fate really is just out to fuck him, specifically—chicken-scratched somewhere on her body, somewhere he has a sneaking, borderline inappropriate suspicion is incredibly easy for her to hide. But he can’t recall, not definitively, at least, if she’d ever indicated, however tenuously, that he was _different_ to her. Separate. That he was worthy of a second look, or maybe a third, or maybe just the courtesy of a fucking conversation.

It wouldn’t have been hard.

To slip him a note. Send him an anonymous owl. Meet him after curfew, in the astronomy tower, a place where they’d have privacy, a place where no one could see them or hear them or interrupt what likely would’ve just been a painfully short, painfully polite, painfully one-sided upper-crust crisp rejection of whatever it meant to be soulmates.

Ron scoffs at the thought, jingling the sickles in his jacket pocket.

_Soulmates_.

Antiquated, asinine, _appallingly coincidental_ horseshit, more like.

He scowls at the overlapping rings of condensation spackled across the bar, crossing and uncrossing his arms, impatient—it’s dark inside the pub, musty, the air sticky with a sour-hot punch of firewhisky and absinthe and cigarette smoke that makes him sniff and grimace and crack his knuckles as he waits to order; someone jostles him from behind, though, and then _another_ someone jostles him from behind, and he isn’t going to bother turning around to look, _he isn’t_ , but—

There’s a tingle.

An instinctive, bone-deep _shudder_ , rippling down his spine, flooding his bloodstream, igniting a slow-burning, low-simmering spark of awareness.

He glances over his shoulder, freezing when he meets a disturbingly—achingly, sweetly, terrifyingly—familiar pair of luminous brown eyes.

“Daph— _Greengrass_ ,” he blurts out, catching himself, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “This is, uh. Wow. Twice in one week. That’s . . . statistically . . . improbable.”

Daphne stares at him, her expression pinched, wavering, like she can’t quite figure out if she’s pleased to see him or not. “Small world, yeah?” she tries, valiantly, and Ron registers a strange, lurching swell of—not _fondness_ , nothing like that, what’s there to even be fond _of—_ but something _similar_.

Distressingly similar.

Ron puffs his cheeks out, fighting the urge to fidget, and gives her a quick once-over to distract himself from his own stupidity.

She’s wearing more makeup than she was the other day, heavy kohl, glittering gray eyeshadow, ruby red lipstick—her hair’s mussed, clearly styled to look like she'd either just sprinted up a flight of stairs or had extremely athletic sex, and her dress is short. Tight. Black. The kind of dress girls wear when they’re trying to pick up.

Trying to _be_ picked up.

Ron abruptly wants to punch himself in the face.

He isn’t _jealous_ , of course, because that would be irrational, that would be ludicrous _,_ that would be _insane_ , they’ve exchanged _maybe_ fifty words the entire time they’ve known each other and two-thirds of those words were barely even passably pleasant—except he _is_ jealous, actually, just a little, because she’s _his_ , on some level, she is, and he can’t bring himself to erase that particular thought once he’s processed it.

Because he’s wondering now.

He’s wondering what she looks like when she’s flirting, when she’s smiling, wondering about what she might say and how she might say it and who she might say it _to_ —since it won’t be him, that’s for fucking sure.

“Yeah,” Ron says, belatedly, curling his toes inside his shoes. “Small world.”

Daphne’s gaze darts up to his chest—no, to his shoulder, to the top of it, to the exact spot where her name curlicue loops around the bulky curve of muscle. There’s a peculiar slant to her mouth, a slight uptick towards one side, a wryly wistful brand of regret that he only really recognizes because he feels like he’s seen it before—and she’s biting the inside of her cheek, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her dress, hesitating—

Someone shoves into her from behind, pitching her forward on wobbly stiletto heels, and she falls directly into Ron.

And Ron knows, intellectually, that touching her is _supposed_ to be like this.

Tremendous.

Extraordinary.

He’s read the books, and he’s heard the stories, and he’s witnessed the effects firsthand.

He just—

He isn’t prepared.

He isn’t _ready_.

She’s warm and soft and fits right up against him like she belongs there—which, technically, he guesses she _does_.

“Oh,” she gasps, sounding overwhelmed. “I’m—I’m sorry, these aren’t even my shoes, I don’t usually—I mean, Pansy dragged me out tonight, she’s been a _terror_ lately, and she won’t tell me why, she never does, but she said it was important I get out and . . . mingle? After what happened with you at—”

Daphne cuts herself off, just like she did before, the other day, like she’s said too much, like she’s _revealed_ too much.

Her cheeks are pink.

Her waist is tiny.

“Yeah,” Ron says inanely. His heart is arbitrarily skipping beats, no rhythm, no _reason_ , and he can’t seem to force himself to let go of her. “Uh. I could—did you—can I buy you a drink?”

She stares at him some more, a fleeting shadow passing over her face, and this was a bad idea, this was a bad, dumb, fucking _reckless_ idea, and he should take it back, he should take it back _immediately_ , he should perform a slew of illegal memory charms or drown himself in the nearest bottle of goblin rum or pretend there’s been some kind of emergency at the twins’ shop, yeah, vandals or burglars or—or a _fire_ , even—

“No, thank you,” Daphne says quietly. Almost a whisper. She glances at his shoulder again, closer than she’s ever been, barely an inch away. “I really . . . I shouldn’t.” And then she swallows. Steps back. Brushes her fingertips over the spots on her ribs, her hips, where his hands had been. Like she’s checking. Like she’s _marveling_. “It was—nice to see you.” Her lips quiver, and his heart thumps and stutters and _waits_. “Excellent. Good.”

She disappears into the crowd, and Ron huffs out a laugh, squeaky and strangled and helpless.

Startled.

 

* * *

 

It’s another two days later, and Ron’s sitting sprawled out at one of the sun-drenched cast-iron café tables outside Fortescue’s, digging into a large cup of strawberry ice cream. He’s just taken a bite, savoring the flavor, when Daphne Greengrass appears on the cobblestoned rim of the patio, right in front of him, suddenly enough that he does a dramatic double-take, accidentally flinging several drops of rapidly melting ice cream into his own hair.

“Hello,” she greets him, looking weirdly determined, and she’s wearing _jeans_ , tight and dark and high-waisted, a seafoam green blouse only half-tucked in, sleeves fluttering, neckline low, and her hair is loose around her shoulders, not quite as expertly tousled as it usually is. “Are you—do you mind if I—can I join you?”

Ron chokes on his ice cream, thumping his chest with his fist. “Uh,” he manages to get out, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Yeah. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. I’m—I only have ten minutes, I’m just on my break.”

Daphne sits gingerly on the edge of the chair opposite Ron’s, her knees clamped together, her hands folded neatly on the table, her posture pin-straight; she seems _nervous_ , but a secretive, almost exhilarated kind of nervous, like she’s breaking the rules, like she’s _rebelling,_ and it’s—fuck, it’s fucking _charming_. Endearing. An utterly incomprehensible mismatch for the girl he thought he remembered from Hogwarts.

The spoiled Pureblood, the timid Slytherin, the sidekick, the follower, the girl who didn’t possess a single original thought or feeling or opinion or—

“So,” she begins, taking a breath, and somehow, her spine goes even more ridiculously rigid. “How, um. How are you? How have you been?”

Ron slurps at the ice cream dripping down his spoon, nonplussed. Dumbfounded. A little fucking uncomfortable, honestly. “Uh,” he hedges. “I’m—fine? It’s . . . I mean, you saw me the other night. It’s—the same. I’m the same. Fine.”

She nods earnestly, encouragingly, like his bumbling, moronic response was profoundly interesting to her, and then peers up at him from beneath the lush sweep of her lashes. Her eyes—and, god, her _eyes_ —bore into him expectantly, and he bounces his knee, slouches further into his seat, tells himself that she probably finds him just as confusing as he finds her.

Hopes so, at least.

Wouldn't bet on it.

“Um,” he adds, after a full minute has passed, and sloppily conjures a second spoon, gesturing to the ice cream. “Did you—want some?”

She slowly shakes her head. “No, thank you.”

He shrugs, shoveling another bite into his mouth, and she just—

Watches him.

The silence between them stretches on, interrupted by the occasional chirping bird and whistling breeze, and it’s awkward. _Fucking_ awkward. Ron has a vague, mostly half-formed thought that it shouldn’t be so _difficult_ for soulmates to have a simple conversation, but he’s always been aware, on some level, that his relationship to his soulmate was never going to be exactly normal, so maybe this is all he can reasonably expect from her. Maybe this is it.

Brow furrowed, he takes another bite of ice cream.

Daphne is fidgeting, he notices.

Slip-sliding her fingernail along the fleur-de-lis groove on the arm of her chair.

She’s hunching forward a bit, her nostrils slightly flared, eyes downcast, expression troubled, like she’s disappointed in herself, resigned to reality, like whatever impulse had brought her here, to him, to this table—it’s abandoned her, fled the scene, let her down.

“How—how are you?” Ron asks, too loudly, too anxious to get that awful fucking look off her face. “I mean—how have you, uh, how have you been?”

Daphne blinks at him, visibly surprised, visibly _suspicious_ , but then—

A smile.

Tentative.

Temporary.

Genuine.

She reaches for the second spoon.

 

* * *

 

Two more days, two more opportunities for Daphne Greengrass to show up unannounced, impeccably dressed and transparently restless, hesitant, _obstinate_ , like she’d had to really talk herself into it, like she’d had to really muster up the conviction, the courage—and Ron would be offended by that, probably _should_ be offended by that, but he gets it.

He really fucking likes her, is the thing.

He really doesn’t  _want_ to fucking like her, is the other thing.

“Of course it’s a _sandwich_ ,” Daphne says, exasperated, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She has on a pair of sleek black tights with miniature white hearts printed all over them—tights he would’ve made fun of a year ago. A month ago. Yesterday. Now, he’s just distracted by how sheer they are. “It’s two slices of bread with a filling. That’s the _definition_ of a sandwich.”

“Yeah, but it’s just  _cheese_ ,” Ron automatically retorts, shifting around on his makeshift seat. She’s sitting on a new shipment of _Mister Right Now_ love potions, and he’s putting an exceptional amount of effort into not reading too much into it. “If you took away half the bread, it would just be cheese toast.”

Daphne wrinkles her nose. “Well, yeah, but if you took away half the bread on  _any_ sandwich, it would stop being a sandwich. That doesn’t prove anything.”

Ron grunts. “I guess, yeah.”

“You _guess?_ ”

“It just doesn’t _feel_ like a sandwich,” he grumbles, a little mulishly. “It isn’t substantial enough. A sandwich is _lunch_ , right? Yeah? A grilled cheese is . . . a _midnight snack_ , at best. It isn’t something you eat when you’re hungry.”

Daphne glances doubtfully at the two empty, crumb-littered plates stacked on the crate next to him. “You do seem to eat an awful lot.”

Ron pats the flat of his lower abdomen, stretching his legs out as he leans back against the stock room wall. “I’m in the prime of my life,” he sniffs. “That requires _maintenance_. Fuel. I’m fueling excellence, Daphne, and that takes _dedication_ , that takes—”

Daphne snorts, and not even politely, either, like she’s halfheartedly inviting him to laugh at the joke _with_ her—no, she’s openly laughing _at_ him, her shoulders shaking, her cheeks dimpling, her teeth peeking out, perfectly even, sparkling white, from her wide-open mouth.

Ron firmly instructs himself to blink.

He doesn’t blink.

He then—equally firm, twice as desperate—instructs himself to look away.

He doesn’t look away.

Her laughter eventually fades, tapers off into short, hiccupping giggles, but he’s still staring at her, still _studying_ her, memorizing the point of her chin and the slope of her jaw and the heart-shaped bow of her upper lip, the microscopically crooked line of her nose, the curves and the bends and the arches and the shadows and—

She’s blushing, he realizes.

Like she’s embarrassed.

Like she _knows_.

And since he knows that she knows that he’s being a giant fucking creep, he blushes, too. Fucking pale skin. Fucking red hair. Fucking _freckles_.

“So, uh.” He coughs into his forearm, jumping to his feet, and nearly trips over the leg of a flimsy folding card table. “I have to—work, get back to work, I mean, but this was—”

“Nice?” Daphne finishes for him, voice warbling with amusement. “Excellent?”

Ron’s stomach lurches and swoops and spins and spirals and it’s like the first time he ever went flying, like the first time he ever rode a broom that was actually functional—it’s like an adrenaline rush rooted squarely in magic, like the world has opened up, expanded, turned three-dimensional, offered him a second chance at a fresh perspective. Brighter colors. Smaller problems. 

“Excellent,” he repeats faintly. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

Ron lasts two whole days, which is two whole days longer than he thought he would.

“Where’s yours?” he blurts out while they’re standing in front of the bakery case at Madam Puddifoot’s, arguing about scones. And clotted cream. And the validity of honey as a replacement for actual sugar. “Your, uh. You know.”

For a moment, less than, a split-second, Daphne looks taken aback—and then there’s a brief flash of guilt, anger, resentment and sadness and uncertainty and yearning and _hope_. It’s dizzying. Ron can barely keep up.

The bell above the door jingles merrily, then, a lukewarm gust of early autumn wind barreling through the tea shop, and Daphne straightens her shoulders, inhales, exhales, visibly steels herself for—something.

Everything.

With short, jerky, methodical movements, she untucks her blouse from her skirt and tugs at the zipper on the side, inadvertently giving him a brief, tantalizing glimpse of peach-pink lace and creamy skin, smooth skin, bare skin, and—

His name.

His handwriting.

It’s scribbled across the outer curve of her hip, messy, careless, uneven, and he’s reaching out to trace the letters, his mouth dry, his fingers trembling, before he can remind himself not to.

“I’m,” he starts to say, meeting her eyes—big, brown, pretty, hypnotizing—for what can’t possibly be the very first time but feels like it is, feels like it _must_ be, and stops.

He could be sorry.

He could be confused.

He could be delighted or disappointed or apathetic or a dozen other things, better or worse or both, except it’s finally occurred to him—with a telltale burst of unexpected and highly unsettling clarity—that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have a clue.

He’s Daphne Greengrass’s soulmate, the one person out of all the other billions who’s supposed to matter, who’s supposed to be able to hear the things she doesn’t say, the things she can’t bring herself to say, and that could mean as much or as little as he wants it to. As much or as little as _she_ wants it to. There isn’t a catch. There isn’t a loophole. He’s spent the better part of a decade letting her be a stranger, letting her _stay_ a stranger, and he can’t really remember why.

He clears his throat.

He gently zips her skirt back up.

He holds her gaze, and he grabs her hand, and he tangles their fingers together, watching, entranced, enthralled, as she shyly ducks her chin and tucks her hair behind her ear and licks her lips.

“Yeah,” she agrees, and that’s a smirk, that’s a _smirk_ , swift and sly, teasing, deadly, a new layer of whoever she is, whoever she’s going to be, peeled back and peeled raw, just for him, “me, too.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


End file.
